Muslim Identity In The City Of Turkestan: A Qualitative Study Of Social Interactions

Abstract

This thesis project is centered around Turkestan city in the south of Kazakhstan. Being the home to the Sufi leader Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, while at the same time an expanding modern city, the thesis explores how citizens in the city of Turkestan negotiate their identity between religious rules and values and secular systems. By looking at the population of people living in the city of Turkestan in Kazakhstan, there is an intersecting area between religious practices and secular environments. This research seeks to answer the question about how a pool of people affiliated with a specific educational institution in Turkestan perceive and negotiate their identity in a changing social and religious landscape. It focuses on conflicting feelings in individuals during the interactions between opposite genders stemming from religious rules, traditional values and secular norms of the society. The existing research gap in scholarship does not cover the study on how the role of the school setting affects cross-gender interactions and how the construction of a Muslim identity functions in a secular country such as Kazakhstan. Earlier research on the topic of Muslim identity tend to focus on the political top-down point of view on religious identity in a secular country, though this research shows how individual people negotiate their identity between religion and secularism in a special setting, namely a closed community affiliated with a Turkish Kazakh high school. Hence, it is a bottom-up point of view on identity, values and points of conflict and discomfort for individuals with religious beliefs in a secular environment. The methodology of the thesis is qualitative, and it includes semi-conducted, in-depth interviews. Based on the answers of the interviewees, this study argues that there is a strong religious identity and a moral compass within this group of people. However, many of the individuals experience a feeling of conflict with how the secular society and the religious rules are expecting them to behave. To analyse how individuals navigate their way through social interactions, concepts such as uyat (shame), neighborhood pressure and cultural and Islamic practices is examined. Finally, the study argues that religious values have a central role in many of the interviewees’ life, though the secular work or school environment hinders them in pursuing a religious oriented life. The intersection between religious values and rules that the interviewees want to follow may cause a conflict with the society around them, creating a feeling of discomfort, guilt or split opinions on how to behave in their interactions with opposite genders.